Look into my eyes, you are going to seek substantiated, trustworthy information before you automate your manufacturing. Now say, YES to that! As one of the small manufacturers you are very interested in applying cost-saving methods to your business that will help to grow your business. Production automation is one of those areas that can contribute greatly to production improvement and cost reduction. As other business owners are, you are probably influenced in your business decisions by the many encounters that you have with business associates, sales people, and competitors in your daily life. These influences can come in the form of rumors, opinions, or information about actual experiences in other successful businesses. Some of these influences can be a good thing because they can direct you toward some good solutions for your business. Most of the time the good suggestions come from people you know who are in the business and have tried some solutions that turned out very well for them. Excellent results with excellent testimonials can give you a great basis for making decisions to attempt the same or similar automation projects to get positive results for your business. You need to have a positive outlook concerning the results that automation can contribute to your business before you start the process of adding it to your manufacturing. You should start the research about automation by looking for the ways that automation can contribute positively to your specific business.
It is important for you to determine how reliable the source of information is before you actually try to implement it yourself. You should be able to substantiate the methods and the results. The availability of this kind of positive scenario can be true for small manufacturers who associate with other members of their industry through memberships in industry committees, trade associations, and other professional groups. Sometimes information of this sort is shared from one company to another where the companies are not direct competitors, but have similar manufacturing processes. Often these groups are an excellent source for research that you might do about ideas that you have for automating your business. You should be very bold about inquiring about other companies experiences with automation. Most small manufacturers are interested in telling others about the success that their company has had, particularly when it involves automation that improves their productivity. Conversely, you might be able to assist another manufacturer if they inquire about how you accomplished the successful automation that you have implemented in your business.
It would behoove you to become a member of those associations who have members that are involved in the technology that you might use in your business for automation. The first hand experiences of those engineers and technical people in other small manufacturers can be invaluable for helping you to make decisions about the automation in your company. They can also be helpful in the selection and evaluation of a solution provider that would be best for helping you to set up automation. The previous experience of a recommending company can be helpful in steering you away from problem areas that they may have had when they set up automation.
When you find a group with which you want to associate you should prepare before you go to meet with the folks in these groups. This preparation should include a list of topics about which you would like to gain information. You should prepare a list of specific questions about the areas of automation in which you have an interest so that you can make the proper decision about automating manufacturing. You should find that the information that you gather in these kind of sessions will speak directly to what you need. This information will contain both the positives and the negatives about what automation you may want to implement in your operation. Knowing these facts makes it a lot easier for you to approach any company that is a solution provider. You will be able to query about the applications that they offer and how they actually apply to your company, both positive and negative.
The approach to automating your business can have a very stable start if you have gathered information from companies that are successful with a similar type of automation project as you are going to attempt. This is also a good starting point for your plan for the automation. Knowing what other small manufacturers have been successful in doing can be very beneficial to you. You will know what to include in the plan and be able to schedule automation steps in such a way so that you can avoid problem areas that have been indicated by others. If you use this approach to gathering information you may also discover that the automation that you want to set up may not be a project that you want to undertake because of the problems that you will encounter. In other ways this technique can help you to modify your approach to automation so that the result will be the most successful that it can be.
Related Topics
Any Job Shop Can Utilize Automation with a Little Planning – A job shop that has been in business for a while has all the expertise of job shop manufacturing that is required to be successful when making parts for its customers. Usually the customers that a shop would serve are in one industry and have a long standing relationship with the shop. This relationship has been built and become strong because of the ability of the shop to meet the needs of the customers at the time that the customers require quality parts.
Automation Grows a Small Business from Job Shop to Product Manufacturer – Automation does not always have to be extremely complex with multiple work stations to be productive for a business. There are a lot of small manufacturing shops around that could utilize automation to improve the bottom line of their businesses and make the productivity of their workers increase dramatically. Sometimes a shop owner gets the idea that when you mention the term “automation” in relation to their business you would also have to start thinking about millions of dollars to finance such an undertaking. This is simply not the case.
What You Really Wanted To Ask About Automation Projects And Now You Don’t Have To – Any of the automation projects that your company may contemplate undertaking should be preceded by some very specific questions and explicit answers. First of all you need to determine what the objective is for wanting to take on any of the automation projects. More specifically, what is the competitive edge that you are trying to achieve by automating some part of your business. During the process of answering this question you should find out the details on such topics as what are the current action of competitors in the market. You should define as many of the demands that are in the marketplace as you can. Also it would best for you to know what technologies are available to help you complete your possible automation projects.
Process Layout Affords Small Manufacturers Best Capability for Batch Manufacturing Efficiency – Depending on your type of operation there are some well-defined types of manufacturing layouts that are best suited for and implemented effectively in certain types of manufacturing operations. If you have a small job shop that produces customized products in low volume numbers then you are probably in need of a layout that is sometimes called a functional layout. In this configuration all the tasks of a similar type are performed in the same area of the plant floor. A good example of such an operation is the machine or job shop. In this operation all the milling functions are done in one area, all the boring operations are done in another, all the riveting is done in another, so that all like equipment is placed together to perform similar operations. When raw materials are routed through the machine shop they are passed from one functional area to another until completed. Advantages of the process layout include flexibility.
One Piece Flow Production Optimizes Manufacturing Automation – The production flow in cellular manufacturing has a very important associate that helps manufacturing achieve its optimum rate. That associate is one piece flow production. When a production line design includes cellular work stations it is in the best interest of the management of the production operation to consider implementing one piece flow production. Including one piece flow production in the operation is the best way to have manufacturing create only products that are needed. As a product moves through the work stations of the production line there is no accumulation of partially completed products between the work cells.
Suggestions to Set Up One Piece Flow Production in Manufacturing – As a manufacturer there is a series of steps that you can take that will assist you in the design of an optimized production line. One of your goals in setting up the line should be to optimize the flow of products through each work cell, and create a production rate as close to one piece flow production as possible. The one piece flow production rate defines the flow of the production line so that each work cell works on only one product at a time. The queue between work cells contains only one product at any given time. If the queue preceding a given work cell is empty, and the work cell has completed work on a previous product, then the work cell is idle until a product is placed in the queue so the cell can continue work.
One Piece Flow Production in Manufacturing Automation Surpasses Batch Processing – One piece flow production is the betterment of batch processing in manufacturing automation. Batch processing was a large step up from the manual processing in the past, but one piece flow production is an even larger step up from batch processing. Just the name of batch processing indicates that large groups or batches of products are manufactured. This is a great idea, but one piece flow production is a better way.
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